Briefly: Aizuwakamatsu

One and a half weeks ago, I traveled to the city of Aizuwakamatsu(会津若松市-"meeting harbor young pine city"-interesting, considering the city is about equidistant from both oceans that Japan touches) , mostly to set myself up to climb Mount Bandai the next day, so I only had an afternoon and an evening to see what the city had to offer.

Aizuwakamatsu proved to be a place that was more charming for its mundane bits than the actual tourist destinations. I visited a botanical garden that was famous for having a variety of medicinal herbs, for example, but it was rather small and while nice, not any better than other gardens I've seen around Japan (such as the one in Tamagawa-ji). I also visited the local castle, which I will picture down below:



The castle was moderately interesting from the outside, featuring the Pythagoras'-layer-caked look of so many Japanese citadels. It went through the usual changes of feudal hands at various times, and also was the site of a siege in the Boshin War I would have poked around inside as well, except that it was expensive and crowded. I was also on a budget for time, so I decided to move. Japanese castles have their own distinct look, and any one would be of interest to a foreign visitor. I've seen several, on the other hand, and frankly, if you've seen one Japanese castle...

What was nice about Aizuwakamatsu was the intimacy of the setup. The was a district about 4km square that constituted the downtown/oldtown district, and it was populated by an assortment of interesting-looking little restaurants and businesses. You could tell its proximity to Tokyo by the increased population of Western-style bars and slightly trendier shops, but it also had plenty of the somewhat hinterlandish charm that you see around Tohoku. It also had this:



As much as I liked their Colonel, I wanted to make sure to try out the whatever the local cuisine was before I left, and decided to go somewhere else. A talkative guy in an urushi shop recommended a place to me that he said was both delicious and featured the local flavor. It turned out to be both, as well as being well off of the beaten path, and a little on the expensive side. The food was excellent, however, and had a slightly different mix of vegetables and meats than I was used to in Niigata:



The restaurant was also interesting unto itself- people sat on tatami (woven mats), while waitresses in more traditional dress scurried around to each table. The ceiling was about 1 foot lower than I am tall, so I had to stoop and dodge bamboo lanterns to find my table in the corner:



I certainly didn't have a chance to try as many of the businesses as I would have liked, but I got the impression that Aizuwakamatsu, even if it is a ho-hum spot for tourists, would be a nice place to live. The people seemed friendly, and everything had an intimate-feeling compactness to it.

I'll sign off on Aizuwakamatsu with something I don't usually do- posting a photo of a humorous English sign. I usually don't because 1) there are whole websites devoted to that kind of thing, 2) if one were to photograph and post all the hilarious and ill-translated English in Japan, it would be a career path unto itself. This sign was too good not to post, however:



I like to think that in fine print on the handle is a sticker that says "pull handle to release cat," but sadly, there wasn't.